Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Men and women lose muscle and strength as they age. This loss of muscle has many negative health consequences, including difficulty moving around and performing everyday tasks as well as being a predisposing factor for diseases like type 2 diabetes. Due to weakness, older individuals are thus at an increased risk of falls and fractures, which are critical points in any older persons life. The cycle of physical impairment and muscle loss becomes particularly worrisome when noting that seniors currently make up 14% of the Canadian population but account for roughly 45% of healthcare spending. By 2036 seniors will make up 25% of our population and thus we require solutions as to how to ameliorate reduced function in older persons. Studies have shown that muscle loss in aging potentially occurs because older muscle, for reasons we don't completely understand, needs more dietary protein than young muscle to maintain a constant mass. The amount of protein an older person would need to consume with each meal to prevent age-associated muscle loss is large and potentially impractical to recommend. Additionally, older adults tend to reduce their dietary intake when hospitalized or when they are not mobile which may increase the amount of muscle lost during these time periods. The question I propose to answer, is whether we can prevent muscle loss in the elderly when ingestion of a high quality milk protein, whey, is consumed in combination with a slight reduction in food intake alone as well as in combination with two weeks of reduced daily activity (750 steps per day). This will help us to better understand the factors affecting how inactivity and protein intake combine to reduce loss of muscle in aging. Further, this work has the potential to pave the way for cost-effective lifestyle changes (diet) and/or product development, which might be implemented amongst the elderly in the future to reduce muscle loss in aging and alleviate some of the anticipated healthcare costs.